A common problem in aerial photography is that the acquired optical aerial images are contaminated by clouds obscuring the view. Specifically, clouds can be a fatal problem in optical images, and especially limits image interpretability. For example, clouds hinder the usability of the images in applications such as urban planning and environmental monitoring. Due to the high cost of aerial image acquisition, it is desirable to generate cloud free images by fusing multiple cloud-contaminated images captured at different time or from different view angles.
Conventional cloud removal methods assume that the images are well-aligned and do not take parallax into consideration, even when those images are captured from different view angles. However, the present disclosure has observed that slight misalignment has a significant effect on high definition (HD) images, and can lead to significant blurring in HD images. This can be especially true for urban areas where buildings exhibit different elevation.
Therefore, to meet the requirements of modern HD image applications, the present disclosure is addressing the need to develop fusion algorithms suitable for HD images of three dimensional (3D) scenes.